[4] He later joined the United States Army as a private and received a commission in 1865 as first lieutenant of the 15th Infantry Regiment.

[1] In 1872 and 1873, he was in command of a military escort company during the Yellowstone surveys of the Northern Pacific Railway.

After spending two years in Cienfuegos, Cuba, he was sent to the Philippines, where he conducted a scorched earth campaign against guerrilla forces under general Maximo Abad on the island of Marinduque.

[1] He retired in March of that year,[2] and in recognition of his military service, a special Act of Congress appointed Corliss to the rank of brigadier general in 1904.

[1][2] He became a regular correspondent with poet and women's rights activist Elizabeth Oakes Smith, a fellow native of North Yarmouth.

It contains three handwritten diaries, plus an additional fifteen loose pages, which were kept by Corliss during his military service.